


Memento Mori

by synergenic (Losseflame)



Series: The Famine [3]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-20
Updated: 2013-10-20
Packaged: 2017-12-29 23:11:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1011213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Losseflame/pseuds/synergenic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Why’d you do it?” Armin's voice crumples into grief and pleading, and Bertholdt <i>aches</i>.</p>
<p>Bertholdt breathes in a sob.  “Because I was told to, Armin.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Memento Mori

“So I heard you went traitor,” Connie says, grinning cautiously at Jean through prison bars. Bertholdt is asleep, as he is most of the time.

Jean shrugs. “Naw, nothing traitorous about me.” He looks down at Bertholdt, reminds himself that he’s doing the right thing, fuck ‘discarding your humanity’, fuck this ideal that humanity needs to lose what makes it worth saving in order to be saved.

He won’t stand for that shit. 

“Then what the fuck are you doing, man?” Connie asks nervously, glancing at Bertholdt’s figure and then away again. Jean sees the guilt there. He tastes it in his throat whenever he swallows. 

“I’m just staying human,” Jean replies with another shrug, sitting back on the bed to adjust the cloak he’s thrown over Bertholdt.

A rough, protesting noise spills from Connie’s throat. “That’s not fair –”

“Shut the fuck up. I’m goddamn tired of people forgetting that kids do as they’re fucking told. They don’t know right from wrong because adults fucking teach them, and they were _ten_ , Connie. They didn’t know what they were doing, not really, and the thundercunt that tortured him said that there’s more than enough evidence that mental conditioning was used from a young age,” Jean snarls.

“ _Thousands_ of people died!”

“And if it wasn’t Reiner and Bertholdt, it would have been something else, Connie!” Jean _yells_ , patience fucking gone. He knows he’s a spoiled Trost boy, knows he can’t even begin to relate to the horrorshow that would have been the Fall of Maria, but he’s a _clever_ spoiled Trost boy, and he seems to realize what other people have cheerfully ignored in order to make them feel more morally righteous. “Connie, I don’t know if you’ve fucking realized yet, but there is something out there that wants to kill us all, and if you goddamn think for one minute that if Reiner and Bertholdt had never been roped into it nothing would have happened than you’re dumber than you seem. The goal of humanity’s extinction isn’t something someone wouldn’t have a few fucking backup plans for, shit.”

Connie is left wide-eyed and shocked at the end of Jean’s rant, and he opens and closes his mouth. Jean holds up his hand.

“If all you’re going to do is keep regurgitating the bullshit you’ve been force-fed, fuckin’ spare me. I need my energy to keep him calm when he wakes up.” 

If Jean were in a better mood, he might feel guilty about the red flush on Connie’s cheeks, the way his eyes were shinier walking out than they were walking in. But Connie had walked in only twenty minutes after Jean had talked Bertholdt down from a monster of a panic attack and got him back to sleep, and –

Jean’s just fucking done with the people he’s surrounded by. 

…

A few hours later, Connie creeps back in. The guard has long become apathetic to the situation, ignoring Jean and Bertholdt and now Connie, and the boy looks pale and slight, shoulders hunched, eyes heavy.

Bertholdt is awake this time, and they are sitting on the bed silently, Jean holding Bertholdt’s hand loosely to re-teach him that not all contact means pain. The footsteps announcing Connie’s presence makes Bertholdt stiffen, hand beginning to tremble in Jean’s, and he hums soothingly. 

“I’m taking care of you, remember?”

Bertholdt nods, breath speeding and heartbeat quick in the hollow of his throat. “Yeah,” he whispers, cracked.

He hasn’t talked much. 

“Hey,” Connie says, and Bertholdt flinches back, one hand fluttering to cover the back of his neck. Connie flinches when Bertholdt does, but straightens his shoulders again. “I brought some stuff.”

He thrusts an arm through the prison bars, and Jean slides off the bed to collect a change of clothes, a blanket, a cookie slipped between the two. Jean meets his eyes when he takes them, nods and grasps Connie’s hand for a minute.

“Here,” Jean says, slowly extending the hand holding the cookie to Bertholdt. “Happy birthday.” 

Bertholdt looks at the cookie with wide, blank eyes, and his hands shake as he reaches out, takes it reverently. “Thank you,” he murmurs, voice still rasping over a rough throat. His eyes tear up at the first bite, spill over at the second.

He eats it very slowly. 

“No problem,” Connie replies, sounding very hesitant. He pauses, shifting from foot to foot with his eyes on the ground.

“Anything else?” Jean asks. Toeing at the ground, Connie shrugs.

“I’ve been thinking. About what you said.” He stops, takes a breath and frowns, thoughts buzzing behind his eyes.

“Yeah?” Jean prompts.

“We should take turns,” Connie says in a rush. “Like, you said it took energy, right? Fuckin’…shift that shit. You do a day and I do a day so that we get like, rest and shit. For energy.” 

His eyes meet Jean’s. They say many things his words did not. 

“…If Bertholdt’s okay with that,” Jean says. They both turn to look at Bertholdt, and the boy in question pauses in nibbling at his cookie, looks up at them. The barest twist of curiosity on his features makes Jean’s heart ache; it isn’t tinged with fear for once. 

“What?” he asks, quiet.

“Can Jean and I rotate days? For keeping you safe.” Connie sort of steps closer to the bars, almost reaching for Bertholdt. “You can finish telling me how you do that thing you do in manoeuver gear. The flippy thing. You never did.”

Bertholdt freezes up, his mouth opening as his shoulders begin to shake. “Um,” he starts, throat working desperately. He smiles, vulnerable and trembling, and it’s a gash in flesh, bloody and torn. “Yeah, I –” he stops, voice breaking. “I’d like that.”

Connie nods. “Solid.” He nods again, looks at Jean and does a double-take, squinting at him. “Wanna rotate out now?”

The question makes Jean remember the tiredness itching behind his eyes, the exhausted softness in his muscles.

“…if it’s okay with Bertholdt,” Jean repeats himself, and they both turn to look at Bertholdt again. 

Bertholdt nods, and Jean walks back toward him first, leans down and presses his forehead to the other boy’s. “You’re not…what they say you are. And you don’t have to be what you were made to be, either. You can just be Bertholdt.” 

Bertholdt gasps, a sob starting in his chest and Jean knows that everything is fucked right now, that this is really fucked up, but he presses his lips to Bertholdt’s really quickly, soft and chaste. 

He turns and walks out the door Connie has harassed the guard into opening so that he doesn’t have to see what Bertholdt’s reaction was. 

…

Sasha turns up a few days later, waking Bertholdt up by tapping lightly and insistently at the metal bars. Connie continues to snore beside him.

Bertholdt can’t stop the automatic tightening of his muscles, the way his shoulders hunch and his knees bend to his chest.

“Hey!” Sasha whisper-shouts. “I brought you a boiled potato!”

She sticks a hand into cell, a potato in her fist. There are a few bites taken out of it already. “I had to taste-test, to see if this potato was good enough for its purpose. Sorry for taking so long to get my head out of my ass.”

“I did what they said I did, Sasha,” Bertholdt says, because the guilt is dark and live and writhing in him, poisonous and heady and he’s so _happy_ at how Connie and Jean treat him but –

He did what they said he did. He and Reiner did what people say they did. 

“Yeah, but Jean makes several good points. And I love you; you’re like my family.” Sasha beams, shaking the potato.

Bertholdt can’t speak, choking on her words, which seemed to have buried themselves in his lungs, coiled into his heart. They _hurt_ , he thinks, they hurt so much.

Sasha is still shaking the potato. Slipping off the bed, Bertholdt pads toward her, taking the potato in both hands. It’s still warm, and when he takes a bite he realizes it’s been salted.

He wonders how the hell Sasha got something so expensive as salt, wonders why she’d sprinkle it upon the potato meant for the Colossal Titan.

“It’s weird,” Sasha starts talking as he chews. “Because I never thought it would be like this, you know? I thought it was just humanity and Titans, like, good and bad, neat and simple.” She shrugs. “I also thought I liked Squad Leader Hanji, but I don’t know if I can like anyone who can do what they did to you.” 

The taste of potato turns quickly into one of blood and ash, and Bertholdt coughs, shudders, phantom pain running up his body when he hears that name.

Sasha grins at him. “I’m gonna start keeping you safe just like Jean and Connie, okay? I’ll bring you tons of potatoes, I have a stash.” 

Without further ado, she turns on her heels, walking back out but tossing Bertholdt a grin over her shoulder before she does. 

The next day, instead of Jean coming to switch places with Connie, it’s Sasha, and she has two potatoes wrapped in cheesecloth tucked into her shirt, which she unearths with enthusiasm.

Bertholdt _laughs_ , and the sound feels so strange in his throat.

…

The Commander watches Bertholdt with blue, blue eyes, and Bertholdt is paralyzed. Sasha throws her arms protectively out in front of Bertholdt, standing between him and the Commander as if prison bars don’t separate them.

“I think you should go, dancho,” Sasha says, and Bertholdt thinks that Sasha is the bravest of them. “I really think you should.”

Her voice is friendly. Her eyes are not. 

Commander Erwin raises a brow at her. She clenches her jaw and raises her chin. 

“I need him to speak.”

“I need you to go.” 

“I can use force.”

“With all due respect, dancho, I’d do my best to kill you and whoever else if you tried. I don’t want my squad member to be tortured anymore, and I don’t care if you _need him to speak_.” She spits those words. “I need the people I love to not be tortured.” 

It’s declared so casually, her love for him, and Bertholdt shrinks back, knowing he’s unworthy of it but selfish anyway, greedily replaying the words in his mind.

“Do none of you realize what is at _stake_ here?” The Commander demands, his unreadable expression at last breaking down into frustration.

“I’ve watched enough of my friends die to know what’s at stake, sir,” Sasha replies curtly. “And what’s at stake is how worthy we are of survival, anyway. And you were going to make us unworthy, sir.” 

The Commander barks a laugh. “Is that so?” 

His words are bitter. 

“Yessir, it is.” Sasha nods when she’s finished speaking, and the Commander sighs, so very tired. 

“It’s not that simple, you know,” he says, very soft. 

“I know, sir, but we all have to choose sides eventually.” Sasha shrugs.

The Commander tilts his head as he looks at Sasha, eyes calculating. She grins back, toothy. Without a word, The Commander turns on his heels and walks away, the stance of his shoulders making it clear it isn’t a retreat. 

…

Armin shows up in the middle of the night, waking Bertholdt but not Jean – they are curled together close, and Bertholdt hasn’t really thought about the kiss but he hasn’t _not_ thought about it either – with his quick, pattering footsteps. 

“Please tell me I’m wrong,” Armin says, strangled, after he launched himself at the prison bars, shoving his face between them.

Dread coils slow in Bertholdt’s gut, when he looks at the wild horror in Armin’s eyes. His left leg begins to itch above the knee. 

“Wrong about what?” Bertholdt asks, and his voice is shaking, scared. 

Armin hisses out a breath, turns from the bars to pace back and forth in front of them. “Oh, fuck. Oh, _fuck_. Oh, god.” He bends forward, puts his hands on his knees, and promptly pukes. Most of it is bile, and in the back of his mind Bertholdt wonders after how well Armin has been eating – he looks thinner than when Bertholdt saw him last, and there are blooms of blue-purple around his eyes. 

“…you were starving,” Bertholdt says, his voice small. “We didn’t know what else to do –” his voice breaks, panic starting to buzz along his nerves, “and we couldn’t just – just watch you starve, we _couldn’t_.” 

_We tried_ , he wants to add, but doesn’t.

“Oh, my God, _Bertholdt_ ,” Armin gasps, heaves one last time and hacks out a string of bile. “I _fed you yourself_. I _ate you_.” 

“I fed you myself.” 

“ _Why_?” Armin practically screeches. “Why the _fuck_ would you do that? You’re a _traitor_ , you – you _ruined my life_ , you ruined Eren and Mikasa’s lives, you aren’t – you don’t –” his voice crumples into a sob. “Why’d you do it?”

He isn’t asking about the meat. Bertholdt _aches_. 

“I –”

“You _owe_ me the answer, Bertholdt,” Armin says, eyes watery. “We were friends.”

His last words are pleading.

Bertholdt breathes in a sob. “Because I was told to, Armin.” He laughs, and it arches into a shriek. “That’s it. I don’t hate humanity, I never did, I just –”

He sobs into his hands, fisting his hands in his hair. “We were just following orders we had since we could remember.”

Armin looks at him, eyes pleading and feral. “That’s it?” and he’s begging, looking for anything better than _because we were told to_. 

Bertholdt shudders. “Yeah, Armin,” he sighs, “that’s it.” 

Armin huffs in a breath, nods, scrapes his sleeve across his nose, nods again. “Fuck,” he says.

“Fuck,” he repeats, and then he looks at Bertholdt, eyes intent. “What was it?” 

“Leg,” Bertholdt answers. “One each.” 

Armin shakes, nods again, running his hands through his hair and muttering to himself as he begins to pace again. Finally, he throws his arms into the air. “Fuck _this_ ,” he declares.

Whipping his head in Bertholdt’s direction, he marches back to the prison bars.

“Bertholdt,” he says, sounding very conflicted, “I’m going to get you out.”


End file.
